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Funny or Die Hit With Layoffs

An important article on comedy website Splitsider.com, analyses how Facebook is destroying comedy sites. The article charges Facebook with running a “payola scam” and that they have re-invented the web by designing a “centrally designed internet” that serves to make profit for FB but there is actually no money for developers of content and the creative folks who are actually making funny content. Below is a clip from this article, the link to read the entire article on Splitsider follows the clip:

Last month, in its second round of layoffs in as many years, comedy hub Funny or Die reportedly eliminated its entire editorial team following a trend of comedy websites scaling back, shutting down, or restructuring their business model away from original online content.

Hours after CEO Mike Farah delivered the news via an internal memo, Matt Klinman took to Twitter, writing, “Mark Zuckerberg just walked into Funny or Die and laid off all my friends.” It was a strong sentiment for the longtime comedy creator, who started out at UCB and The Onion before launching Pitch, the Funny or Die-incubated joke-writing app, in 2017.

But Klinman explained in a thread: “There is simply no money in making comedy online anymore. Facebook has completely destroyed independent digital comedy and we need to fucking talk about it.”

We’re not sure about you, but that certainly piqued our interest. We sat down with Klinman to fucking talk about it (and just a note–these opinions are his, and he’s speaking for himself and not on behalf of Funny or Die).

Latest Issue Is Actually Anti-Humor For Shock Value Only

The latest issue of the famed so-called humor magazine from France shows that in the final analysis, the editors actually have no sense of humor at all, they are political extremists dishing out leftist agit-prop in the manner of the old dead Stalinist communist international. If you look at their covers, for years you will not find a lot to laugh at. It is just sick depictions of Muslims and Christians, among others. Compare it to American humor magazines, like MAD Magazine. Even in its wildest issues, Mad never crossed the line of actual depraved political propaganda. Charlie, you ain’t funny now and you haven’t ever been funny. A pity some stupid Muslims attacked your office. You were on the way to propaganda bankruptcy, and suddenly wrapped yourself in victim-hood, and shoveled in millions of dollars from average folks who don’t really understand your game. If the attack had never happened, you’d be in the unemployment line with the rest of your neo-Stalinist pals.

Hey Charlie Boys – Who You Callin’ “Nazis”?

The latest issue shows God drowning all the Texans because they are Nazis and racists. Really? You sick jerks in Paris really believe that? And you think the whole Hurricane Harvey is funny?

Here’s something that would really be funny: Watch the fun if a couple of Charlie Hebdo execs show up in Houston to pass out their rag to those in an evacuation center. Ha! Lights out for the agit-prop boys. And watch out for them gators as you’re trying to swim away from all those angry “Nazis”!

Here’s what the folks in the evacuation centers really look like: Americans.I don’t see any Nazis here. The Charlie boys in Paris must be smokin’ some powerful fear-weed to come up with this one.

Mort Sahl’s New Book Just Released!

Available Now on amazon.com

On December 22, 1953, Mort Sahl took the stage at San Francisco’s hungry i and changed comedy forever. Before him, standup was about everything but hard news and politics. In his wake, a new generation of smart comics emerged―Shelley Berman, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Lenny Bruce, Bob Newhart, Dick Gregory, Woody Allen, and the Smothers Brothers, among others. He opened up jazz-inflected satire to a loose network of clubs, cut the first modern comedy album, and appeared on the cover of Time surrounded by caricatures of some of his frequent targets such as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Adlai Stevenson, and John F. Kennedy. Through the extraordinary details of Sahl’s life, author James Curtis deftly illustrates why Sahl was dubbed by Steve Allen as “the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy.”

Sahl came on the scene the same year Eisenhower and Nixon entered the White House, the year Playboy first hit the nation’s newsstands. Clad in an open collar and pullover sweater, he adopted the persona of a graduate student ruminating on current events. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen,” said Woody Allen, “and I’ve never seen anything like it after.” Sahl was billed, variously, as the Nation’s Conscience, America’s Only Working Philosopher, and, most tellingly, the Next President of the United States. Yet he was also a satirist so savage the editors of Time once dubbed him “Will Rogers with fangs.”

Here, for the first time, is the whole story of Mort Sahl, America’s iconoclastic father of modern standup comedy. Written with Sahl’s full cooperation and the participation of many of his friends and contemporaries, it delves deeply into the influences that shaped him, the heady times in which he soared, and the depths to which he fell during the turbulent sixties when he took on the Warren Commission and nearly paid for it with his career

Watch Mort Live Every Thursday Night at 7pm Pacific on Periscope

If you are on Twitter you can get the Periscope app for free and watch Mort every Thursday night. His show is only broadcast from the Throckmorton Theater in Northern California. He is amazingly sharp and recalls many funny incidents from his long career in show business that included writing for films, comedy gigs, writing for JFK, and working with Jim Garrison on the Kennedy Assassination, which got him black-balled from Hollywood.

Canadian Artist, Cartoonist, Writer and Musician Presented Her Book “Susceptible”

Genevieve Castree 1981-2016

Her tragic early death at age 35 in 2016 was shocking to her fans. She waged a heroic battle against pancreatic cancer. It seems so unfair that such a talented young woman would be taken away. The Comics Journal ran a nice article about her life and work, click here to read it. The video from Skylight shows a shy, young lady, who had a fascinating story of her growing up in Canada, which she managed to illustrate in a charming cartoon book format. Click on the box below to watch this wonderful talk by Genevieve.